PASSINGS

Bill Britt; ‘Hermit of Chestnut Hill’

Bill Britt, 52, “the hermit of Chestnut Hill” in Boston who lived in makeshift huts on government land for nearly two decades and resisted well-publicized efforts to relocate him. Britt had been dead for several months, a victim of hypothermia, when he was found Monday by two of his three children, Boston police said. Born Britton William Boughner in wealthy Chestnut Hill, Britt had lived on nearby land controlled by the Metropolitan District Commission since 1969. In 1985, officials started trying to move Britt, who was legally blind and lived on money from collecting cans and bottles for the deposits. When he refused welfare and several attempts to relocate him to public or subsidized housing, the news media dubbed him “the hermit of Chestnut Hill.”